An appeal from Sidi Mohamed Dadach, The Rafto Prize winner 2002

Since May 21st,2005, the Western Sahara, southern Morocco and some
Moroccan cities, where Sahrawi students are studying, have been fields of
peaceful demonstrations of the Saharawi people calling for their right to
self-determination and independence, and demanding the Moroccan state to pull
out of the occupied territories of the Western Sahara.

The Moroccan state has excessively repressed the non-violent
demonstrators by different kinds of security forces such as the Urban Security
Group (GUS), the Auxiliary Forces, the “National” security and the Mobile
Companies of Intervention (CMI).

The Sahrawi demonstrators were savagely tortured, some of them
disappeared and some others arrested. Up to the present, more than a hundred
injured people have been declared in El Ayun only, about 30 political
prisoners and about ten houses were looted by the Moroccan forces agents. All
these crimes have been perpetrated in less than a month.

On June 17th, 2005, there was a new perilous tendency of the Moroccan
state to target the human rights activists in order to prevent them from
reporting the Moroccan atrocities committed against the Saharwis to the
outside world. These atrocities took place in El Ayun, the capital of the
Western Sahara, Smara, Dakhla, Assa (southern Morocco) and in some Moroccan
cities like Rabat, Casablanca, Fes, Marrakesh and Agadir. The Sahrawi students
studying in these Moroccan university cities were barbarously tortured,
verbally abused and illegally arrested.

The human rights activists are particularly targeted by the savage
repression that is still increasing. Aminatou Haidar, an ex-disappeared and
courageous activist in the women’s rights domain, was violently tortured in
public in Smara street, El Ayun on Friday, June 17th, 2005. She was arrested
the same night as she was getting out of the hospital. The injuries on her
head and back are causing her health troubles as the Moroccan authorities
refused to seriously cure her (apart from some preliminary treatment) nor give
her a medical certificate to prove the aggression.

The situation of the Sahrawi people is alarming, especially that there
are no political or media delegations to report the Moroccan atrocities.
Therefore, I appeal to the Norwegian human rights associations, NGOs and
especially the Rafto institution for human rights to exert pressure on the
Moroccan state to respect the Sahrawis' right to self-determination and
independence, and to allow an international delegation to investigate the
latest crimes committed by the Moroccan forces against the defenseless Sahrawi
citizens.

I also appeal the Norwegian government to recognize the Saharwi Arab
Democratic Republic as a reaction to the Moroccan state’s refusal to accept
the referendum as a free and fair solution to the Western Sahara issue.

Sidi Mohamed Dadach, The Rafto Prize winner 2002,

El Ayun, Western Sahara, June 24, 2005.

_______________________________________________

Forwarded by:
_______________________________________________
Norwegian Support Committee for Western Sahara
wsahara@...

*** Referendum now! ***

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Sahara-update
_______________________________________________